


A Sky Full of Stars

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, tho the comfort is more implied, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 02:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10630248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: Clara can see pain as light, and the ability comes at spectacularly awful time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ignore the plot holes, of which there are many. I was in this concept for the visuals. It is possible that sometime in the future I will add a second chapter of comfort since this is mostly hurt with the implication of resolution.

If she was being honest, Clara had always suspected that trying random foods throughout space and time would come back to bite her in the ass. She’d had the occasional odd side effect-- she wouldn’t quickly forget the quiche that had quite literally caused her chest to erupt into (thankfully) heatless flames-- but there’d been nothing to date that the tardis couldn’t handle, whether via protective bubble or more directly in the medbay.

 

“It would be awful to die from a dodgy fruit, after all we’ve done,” the Doctor had once remarked-- the previous him, bless-- from outside the bathroom door, where he’d parked with an outdated issue of Good Housekeeping in case things got worse instead of better.

 

Privately, she’d agreed with him. Out loud, she said, “We’ve discussed bathroom manners. If I can talk, you shouldn’t be.”

 

“If you would just let me put the vitals scanner in the seat--”

 

“Shut up, Doctor.”

  
  


 

Now, she stood contemplating the wares of a stall in the open air market on a planet that reminded her strongly of every impression she’d ever gotten from reading about Texas. Which, she mused, was a frankly disproportionate amount to have read about one state in another country, but everything she’d seen had heavily implied that to know Texas was to be overwhelmed by it. “Overwhelming” was a good word for this bazaar. Everything was big, hovering just below that sweet spot where a typical human brain would give up trying to scale anything and accept its new reality. Clara’s brain had not, and it was constantly trying to account for the sheer magnitude of the things around her. That and the fact that the Doctor had come for her before breakfast had resulted in a killer headache that she was now hoping to assuage with some kind of sustenance.

 

“You could try one of these?” The Doctor gestured to some kind of presumed fruit that looked as though it was trying desperately to choose between being a banana and a mushroom. Clara shook her head, then closed her eyes for a moment to stop the spinning. She made a mental note to sew pockets into her clothes and store food in them for emergencies. 

 

“Something with moisture in it?” she asked. The Doctor prodded a long finger at what looked like a bunch of radioactive cupcakes, each the size of his fist. He raised an eyebrow at Clara, and she waved the hand that wasn’t shielding her eyes from the suns in admission. Her head was throbbing now, a distant ache hiding above her left eye. Three hours in a diplomatic peace meeting in the middle of the desert wasn’t what either of them had been expecting when they’d responded to the intercepted SOS, but hiding under the Doctor’s coat had only done so much to stave off the heat and nothing at all against the arid climate. The Doctor exchanged a few words in the vague direction of up with a heavily accented local, and then the morsel was directly under her nose and it smelled...Clara had gotten used to being unable to identify incomparable new scents, but this one wasn’t unlike lemons. She took it from the doctor and cupped it in her hands before taking a bite as they found a place out of the way and in the shade to sit. The texture was reminiscent of cornmeal, but every granule seemed to burst with fluid and flavor and soon, Clara was feeling less like a vessel for nausea and more like a proper human. She offered a piece to the Doctor, but he waved it away with a perfunctory thanks. 

 

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said once she’d swallowed the last bit and wiped the residual dampness off onto her skirt. Around them, the wind was hot and it blew dust through the alleyway before them, bringing with it the chatter and tinkling of wares. Clara waited.

 

“I think their agreement was a lie,” he said finally. “Which means they will move forward with the planned siege in the coming days.” 

 

Clara took a deep breath and rubbed a stray piece of grit out of her eye before returning her gaze to the color and activity around her. Her voice was soft. “What will happen to them?”

 

He looked up at them too, then, and Clara got the strange time slipping feeling she sometimes got when she looked at his eyes as she was doing now. Sometimes, the knowledge of how old he really was pressed a little more firmly on the edges of her consciousness. “The lower classes are peaceful folk," he said finally. "Unaccustomed to fighting or bloodshed.”

 

“But all of the nobles are trained extensively,” she finished. The Doctor nodded, and frowned when Clara rubbed at her eye again. “Sorry,” she said. “My eyes are playing tricks on me. Keep seeing flashes of light. Is there anything we can do here?”

 

“I will tell the leader of this city to evacuate whoever they can in preparation for the coming conflict,” he said, tracing a finger absentmindedly in the dust around his boots. “I think they already suspect the truth, but the conversation must be had." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Come on.” He stood and offered his hand to Clara, and just then, as she took it, he seemed every bit as large to her as the others gathered in the marketplace. And then came the explosion.

  
  


Clara and the Doctor were spared only because of the tall walls on either side of them. Nonetheless, she felt the ground pitch beneath her as a wave of heat threw her sideways, wrenching her hand from the Doctor’s. She landed hard on her wrist and shielded her head as rubble rained down from the crumbling stone surrounding them. She felt the Doctor grip her firmly by the shoulders and haul her to her feet-- he was shouting something that she couldn’t make out over the din in her ears, but she got the gist and ran full tilt into the grit and smoke of the ruined marketplace. 

 

Flashes of light caught her eye just outside her peripheral vision, occasionally cutting through the haze of destruction. Finally, she paused to look at one flash that was brighter and closer than the others, and she was startled to find that it was coming from her wrist. She shook it as though it were coated in water, but aside from a sharp pain in her bone felt nothing. She looked down and saw smaller seams of light on her arms and legs, little cuts through which light poured like...blood? Something jostled her roughly from behind and she whirled just in time to see one of the shopkeepers stumble past her in a daze, arm outstretched and radiating light from three fourths of his giant body. The Doctor was there again, then, and when he grabbed her wrist she saw the dots of light spattered across his knuckles and a brilliant gash across his cheek, and it was then that she understood. She was seeing pain. Somehow, she was perceiving hurt in the form of light. There was no time to dwell on it. They were running again, and Clara’s world narrowed down to this: a ringing in her ears, a world of tan and gray lit from below by the bodies of the dead and dying, spotlights on the two of them alive, alive, and running and his hand in hers.

 

The Doctor stopped abruptly and used both hands to haul her back by her arm as her momentum nearly pitched her off the edge of the giant crater that had formed on the impact of the first explosion. She didn’t need to hear his voice to catch the swear he uttered as they simultaneously realized that the ship was likely in the middle of the crater-- was perhaps the target of the bomb in question. 

 

He gripped her hand in his and they locked eyes. The ground shook again and off to her left, Clara saw a volley of lights pepper the hazy landscape before winking out almost as one. Clara’s lashes fluttered as she understood that the lights were lives winking out in the same way as light bulbs. She opened them again and set her jaw. The Doctor nodded. They stepped forward and braced themselves for the jump.

 

In midair, the Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree.

 

Clara had an eternal, horrifying second to register what she was seeing-- his face contorting into agony, his back stiffening as a nebula opened in his chest and shoulder-- before the suddenly dead weight of him snatched her forward and pitched the two of them end over end down the sloping sides of the crater until her back hit the side of the tardis with bone-jarring impact. A second later, the Doctor’s body came to an ungraceful stop against her legs and lay still, shining like a terrible galaxy. She scrambled to sit up and turned him over as tears welled in her eyes from a mixture of irritation and panic. The holes in his clothes breathed light and suffused his features in radiance so powerful that Clara felt her breath hitch at the memory of regeneration. But this light didn’t move. Didn’t create as it burned. This light was still but for the beams moving gently through the whipping dust around them. 

 

Clara sat back painfully on her knees and gripped the Doctor’s shoulder in her good hand. By sheer force of will, she pulled him forward and flattened herself so that his body rested its weight on her back. She used the wall of the tardis as leverage to pull them both up and groped for the door with desperate, bright fingers. Her hearing had eased from a shrill ringing to a dull roar through which she could just barely hear distant screams and further explosions. Everything smelled like her gran’s space heater when they turned it on the first cold day of every Autumn.

 

Her hand finally grasped the handle of the door. She shoved and they tumbled into the console room and down a ramp that was not previously there, which dumped them at the base of the console before slamming the door shut. Clara groaned and eased herself to her elbows to reach a hand out to the vein in the Doctor’s throat. To her undying relief, his double pulse was strong and fast beneath her fingertips. If she looked carefully, she could see small rays of light dancing with the rhythm...she pulled herself away and hauled herself up inch by painful inch to the edge of the hub to thread her glowing hand in between the fibers of the telepathic communication.  _ Safe _ , she thought, and when the rotor began to turn, her weight slipped from the interface and she neatly lost consciousness. 

 

They lay there, curled into one another in a living galaxy of light as the tardis bore them through time and space to the safest place it could reach.

  
  



End file.
